That Northwestern fumble forward in the 3rd quarter that they recovered for a first down was one of those fluky things that make you go hmm, and at the time half-jokingly said it was a bad omen…and things went in the ditch soon after.
First of all kudos to Northwestern for playing a hell of a second half. They made some great plays, and took advantage of some weaknesses.
MN ran 71% of the time in regulation. In the fourth quarter the first two drives were run, run, pass. Then, when they did pass the two third down pass attempts the route were short of the sticks anyway, Cousins-like. In the last series instead of turning to Kesich to make a ~54 yarder, well within his range, to ice it away they decided to give it back to Northwestern with over 2 minutes to go. Compounding that error Rob Wenger’s inept unit 7 years running allowed the ball to roll into the end zone. The rest is history. AK missing a wide open BSF (and #9 at the back of the end zone) on a throw any ten year old could make 98% of the time was icing on the cake. Baranowski lost track of the NW TE, game.
PJF has earned a long leash. But, and many of us “old-timers” know this all too well, learning is a life-long process and we don’t know it all at 35, or 40, or 45. PJ is young enough and inexperienced enough he’s still learning. I have great confidence he has enough humility to recognize his anxiety around the overall game strategy is harming the team, harming recruiting. Lack of passing begets a poor passing game begets an inept offense begets losses like this where converting a simple third and short is difficult. In a year the defense is breaking in some key pieces and not getting the job done a mediocre or worse offense and a pathetically conservative approach is harmful to the mission and recruiting going forward and can’t take up the slack. Bring in some offense consultants, PJ. You seat IS getting warmer. That said, changing horses now is probably a mistake, as emotional as we are.
